What's been going on... ** A song of longing...

Psalm 84: 1 - 2

¹ How lovely are Your dwelling places, O Lord of hosts!

² My soul longs, yes, even faints for the courts of the Lord; My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.

Psalm 84 is a delightful psalm to read.

And unlike some other psalms, this one is surrounded by the sounds of heaven.

This Psalm is a song of longing for the house of God, and to be where the Lord dwells, and where His praise is sung and His people gather for worship and it expresses a heartfelt desire for worship.

This Palmist expresses his delights in God’s dwelling place because he delights in the God who dwells there…

His Love for the Sovereign, not love for a mere structure, is in view…

The words “how lovely” literally mean “how desirable.”

Again, the desire was not for the structure.

The architecture, is not the most important thing about the dwelling place.

The presence of the sovereign Lord and Savior was the drawing point.

It is at church, that we are to get a glimpse, a sample, a model [so to speak] for heaven.

If we are looking forward to heaven, then we should also look forward to attending church, because church is the practice ground for heaven.

Now when I talk about church, I am not talking about simply showing up on Sunday to fake a few smiles… and halfheartedly sing a few songs and then suffer through a long-winded sermon.

That is not what church was meant to be. And that is not what heaven will be like either.

When church is the way it is supposed to be, it the best possible place to be.

And although Psalm 84 does not actually talk about the church…  because when this Psalm was written, the church did not yet exist.

This Psalm talks about the temple, which is similar to the church…

The temple was the place where the OT saints went to worship God.

And we can bring it into our modern times and see it as a Psalm about worshiping God as a body of believers gathering together at a church.

In verse 2 it says “my soul longs for the Lord…

The word “soul” is a Hebrew term for the innermost being.

How, deep down inside, at the very depths of our being, even our heart and our flesh, should cry out to spend time with God.

The Hebrew word for “cry out” has the picture of a child who cries out when it is hungry… Much like an infant cries with their whole body.

This is how we should cry out for God… with our whole being.

And This is how we should feel about church too! On every Sunday, we should be thinking, “Wow, what a great thing it is to be the presence of other Christians…

To singing praises and worship songs to God… and hearing the Word of God!

The psalmist is describing not a mere love for God, but an appetite for God.

His spirit, his soul, and his flesh longs for God.